If we could open and intend our eye,
We all, like Moses, should espy
Ev'n in a bush, the radiant Deity.
But we despise these, His inferior ways,
(Though no less full of miracle and praise,)
Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze,

The stars of earth no wonder in us raise.

When Boswell mentioned to Johnson the saying of Shenstone, that Pope had the art beyond any other writer of condensing sense, Johnson replied: "It is not true, sir; there is more sense in a line of Cowley than in a page of Pope." He might have enlarged this criticism in his Life of Cowley: other poets may be read; he is to be studied. The multitude of his allusions cause a continual strain on the memory; and the richness of his fancy blinds the reader to the strength of his intellect; as in tropical woods the thickest trunk of the tree is hidden by the tall grass and plants, that climb up and encircle it.

In Cowley, the feeling for gardens, trees, and fountains, was natural and sincere. He was one

whose heart the holy forms

Of young imagination have kept pure.

But it is worth remarking, that the complaint of his touching line

Business, that contradiction of my fate,

was breathed long before by Bacon.-(De Aug. Sci., 1. viii. c. 3.)

By the side of Cowley, Bolingbroke looks like Fiction holding the hand of Truth; upon his lips, affection for the country was the sigh after flowers upon the stage. However, into woods and fields he went-everything was to be rural; the walls of his house were painted with implements of husbandry, done in black crayon. "I am in my farm," he wrote to Swift; " and here I shoot strong and tenacious roots. I have caught hold of the earth, to use a gardener's phrase, and neither my friends nor my enemies will find it an easy matter to transplant me again." There is, truly, a fortitude to be learned of that schoolmistress whom God employs to guide His children towards Himself- -a high and noble sense of the soul's dignity, which makes it her privilege

Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.

My notes on gardens have swelled into an essay; but I must say one word on their relationship to the pencil. Among ourselves, landscape gardening is confined within narrow boundaries. Few parts of England furnish materials for representing the pictures of S. Rosa, Claude, and the Poussins. Occasional situations may give the scenes of Ruysdael, Berghem, and Pinaker; while Hobbima, Waterloo, and A. Vandervelt can be copied wherever trees, lanes, and water are found. Walpole included Claude in the list, but we have neither his architecture nor sunshine.

MAY 16th.-I called in the other day a little debt that has been owing, for a long time, from Mr. Rogers to Bishop Warburton. This morning I came upon another, which ought to stand in the name of the great poetical capitalist of the seventeenth century. Mr. Rogers, in his delightful fragment, Human Life, portrays the joyous indolence that sometimes creeps over us in youth, when there is balm in the blood as well as in the air:

Yet, all forgot, how oft the eyelids close,

And from the slack hand drops the gathered rose!

The last is a most exquisite line, altogether golden, but melted from Milton's ore; as may be

F

seen by turning to the ninth book of Paradise Lost. Adam, waiting the return of Eve,

Of choicest flowers a garland to adorn

Her tresses, and her rural labours crown;

at length, weary of suspense, wondering at her long stay, and with a foreboding at his heart of coming evil, he goes forth in search of her, and meets her returning from the Tree of Knowledge, with a bough of fruit in her hand. Eve anticipates his questions by relating the history of her temptation. Adam shrinks back in astonishment and horror

From his slack hand the garland wreath'd for Eve
Down dropt, and all the faded roses shed.

Here, as in a verse of Mr. Rogers previously quoted, the elegance of the application lends a secondary kind of originality to the borrower. La Bruyère acutely remarked of Boileau, whose imitations are numerous, that he seemed to create the thoughts of other people-so ingenious are the turns which he gives to a simile or expression. He steals the metal, but the superscription is his own. We may never look upon a writer, worthy of fame, and owing nothing to his ancestors. To speak in the unimprovable language

of Dryden-" We shall track him everywhere in the snow of the ancients."

MAY 17th.-In the history of art, we meet with a small but ingenious band of men who are known as flower-painters. The garden is their studio, and a tulip or rose their favourite sitters. Sometimes the floral features and charms are transferred with the dewy gracefulness of life. The pencil catches the orchard-bloom from the sunniest wall. Among English poets, one has produced pen-and-ink sketches of equal brilliancy; I refer to Darwin. He was not only, in the compliment of Cowper, the harmonist of Flora's court, but the Laureate. His descriptions sparkle with dust of gold. The finger seems to rub it off the page, like crimson-meal from the wings of the butterfly.

But flower-painting in words has never become a distinct branch of poetic art, every master of language having in some measure cultivated it. Shakspere scattered his glowing violets over the hearse of tragedy; Spenser rejoiced in lilies; Milton in all trees, leaves, and perfumes; Thomson found words of many colours for the weeds and flowers of hedge-rows; Cowper's fancy bright